The New 2004 Kit Review!!! (Smiting Ugliness and Tackiness since 2002)

And so, it is time for all good things to come to an end.

As aunt Tamara awakens from her post New Year's bender sleep, she is ready to slap the marks on the last of the participants of our little costume show.
Please to come to aunt Tamara, looks straight in eye and no screaming when aunt Tamara breethe out the fumes.

Rotor Volgograd, the venerable ManU vanquishers of yore, shall exit RPL and may indeed be folded and forgotten before the next season starts. They shall be remembered, if though primarily for that horrid kit they wore in 1996. Anyway, time to see what they have done with blue and white this time.

The primary white:

The secondary blue:


* The script alone deserves full grades, but the blue kit is spoiled slightly by the ugly back stripes. Overall, a 7.5
* The traditional, classic, Stalingrad kit would be all-blue, but white has been the primary color since 2001. The club stays with the traditional blue and white colors, in spite of the fans' best efforts to change them to blue and sky blue, but blue really should come back as the primary. Still, only a half-point deduction, since white has become a tradition in its own right.
* The club has been wearing the "ROTOR" letters accross the chest for about 15 years now, which is commendable, good looking and leaves no space for an ugly sponsor logo. A full point is issued.
* The kid is slightly worse than last year's, which was a bit cleaner. Half a point off.
* Nothing else to comment on, really. The club stuck with their primary colors, wearing white in about 70% of the matches, they didn't experiment with shorts ans socks combos, they didn't have "winter kits" and they completely stunk on the pitch.

So, we have a decent 7.5, which is as big a consolation as Volgograd fans can hope for now. Not that they need much consolation, really:

 

Ah, well... Here are the final results (last year's standing in parentheses)

1. (12) Dinamo Moscow - Both ganu and myself heartily agree: when you go for retro, you cannot lose. With a grade of 9.5 the Garbagemen stop just short of perfection due to the sponsor's logo, but the old-fashioned D is so ever hard to beat. The Fashion Gold Medal is a just reward for the ability to recognize what was right and wrong with last year's clothes and trimming the fat properly.
2. (4/6) Spartak Moscow - Brigning back The Stripe pulls the usually-stylish Meat into the silver medal standing with 9 points. Write it in your notebooks, kids: retro wins. Of course, ganu was unable to recognize The Stripe's sublime beauty and his 3.5 mark together with the blatantly blasphemous Boro reference are duly striken from the public memory.
3. (11) Alania Vladikavkaz - The Caucausus was always known for unusual fashion customs (did you know that it's shameful for a man to be seen in public without his dagger?), so a bit of color is always forgivable. But you have to know where to simplify and the Moustachioed Ones have finally figured it out. My 8.5 points reflect the utmost objectivity, while the extra half-point lavished upon the Anals by ganu probably shows his bias to the Caucausian drinking traditions.
4. (4/6) Moskva Moscow - Staying simple and two-tone makes you boring yet safe. Besides, Hector Bracamonte's haircut provides for all the color one needs. I gave the Luzhkov Troops 8 points, while ganu was excited enough to make it a 9, which served as a tie-breaker with Saturn.
5. (7/8) Saturn Ramenskoye - More simplicity, but too many shirts. 8 points given by both of us, relaying the general message: okay, not bad, next.
6. (3) Rotor Volgograd - The sixth place was always considered the "pits" of Soviet and Russian standings since it would usually put the team just out of the European contention. I bet Volgograd would've sold its collective soul for this place right about now. It's too bad we won't see those simple blue/white shirts with the "ROTOR" insignia for a while. My 7.5 points reflect dissatisfaction with silly Umbro stripes, but ganu gave them 8.5, breaking the tie with Zenit.
7. (14/16) Zenit St. Petersburg - More Umbro silliness but Aunt Tamara like her baby blue. Fashion relegation last year gave the Culturals a much-needed kick in the buns, producing the curren respectable 7.5-point effort. Ganu was almost as enthused, giving them a 7.
8. (13) Rostov - For this club, with its long standing tradition of the most horrifying kits in Russian football, being boring is a complement. Once again, however, too many shirts and too many combinations hurt the grade. Both I and ganu agreed on a 7.
9. (2) Rubin Kazan - Just as their performance on the pitch, their kit has taken a nosedive in '04, largely thanks to sticking a sponsor logo on it and switching from Nike to Adidas with the latter's inane mesh designs. I gave it a 6, while ganu was less disgusted with the insurance company logo and settled on a 7.
10. (-) Kuban Krasnodar - This generic Umbro crap earns a 5.5 from me and a 6.5 from the Umbro compatriot ganu, which breaks the tie with Shinnik.
11. (9/10) Shinnik Yaroslavl - 5.5 points is a step down, and frankly you have to work on it to make blue-black stripes look bad. But this is what you get for copying Chelsky.
12. (7/8) Krylya Sovetov - Once again, the Wings get bitch-slapped for underusing a beautiful kit in favor of an ugly one. This time the punishment is harsher - 5 points instead of 7.5 is the final grade. Ganu was easier on the wearers of mouse-gray and went with 7.
13. (14/16) Lokomotiv Moscow - Their taste in kits is always tragic, but last year they at least stayed away from the downright embarassing. It's appropriate, considering they had a championship to win in these threads. My grade was 5 and ganu's more general 6 wasn't able to pull them in front of the Wings.
14. (-) Amkar Perm - Avoiding relegation is all a newcomer can hope for, but generic Adidas crap will often land you 3 points. Ganu felt compelled to give them 4.5, which wouldn't change the standings much.
15. (4/6) CSKA Moscow - Okay, that's probably is WAY TOO LONG we wore decent stuff, they thought. The result? Relegation. Though ganu gave them 5 points, I feel that my 2 reflects reality better.
16. (1) Torpedo Moscow - How do you do this? How do you go from the best kit in 2003 to the worst kit ever? Raping retro will do that. Minus-5 was way to high, if you ask me, but ganu gave them a whole 0.

 

Yes, we will end it with a sneak preview of 2005 clothing lines.

It seems that Torpedo are in a hurry to rehabilitate their fashion catastrophe of last year. They will likely succeed in doing so, despite choosing generic (and outdated) Umbro crap.
This will make them very difficult to distinguish from Moskva, unless the latter evetually do follow on their promise (more like threat) to use Kelme kits this year. Nothing like emulating FC Santa-Coloma, the Andorran champions, to earn some respect.
Lokomotiv's taste in kits remains heart-rippingly tragic, as this time they deside not only to splash green heavily on their red shirts, but also to do it in illogical places of the human anatomy. Those spikey stripes on the back of short legs may just earn them a negative grade this year.
Unfortunately, Zenit appear to have fallen for the same crappy Adidas design. So much for high culture, as these threads make them look like rather desperate prostitutes.
CSKA's new Umbro kits are basically the same as last year, except much more ugly. They liked painting their arses so much, they now do it in the home kit too. It will take a major effort by the likes of Rostov to dislodge the Horses from a spot in the relegation train.
Spartak toyed with greatness last year and decided that looking good is a luxury they can't afford. A tremendous amount of Nike silliness is promised to be lavished upon Meat fans this year.
Dinamo, on the other hand, seem to know what's good for them as they apparently will stay with the retro kit. However, the new sponsor logo (Xerox) is of the wrong color, which may hurt the grade.

Aunt Tamara shall retire in 2005 and her replacement will be chosen sometime in the near future. Standartenfuhrer Stirlitz is among the qualified applicants.